[citation needed] As game elements, badges have been used by organizations such as Foursquare and Huffington Post to reward users for accomplishing certain tasks.

[5] In 2007, Eva Baker, the President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), gave the Presidential Address at their annual conference on the need to develop merit-badge-like "Qualifications" that certify accomplishments, not through standardized tests, but as "an integrated experience with performance requirements."

Baker envisioned youth assembling "their unique Qualifications to show to their families, to adults in university and workforce, and to themselves."

In September 2011, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, announced the launch of the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition.

[8] According to Arne Duncan, badges "can help engage students in learning and broaden the avenues for all learners or all ages, to acquire and to demonstrate as well as document and display their skills.

[11] The report asserts that badges "have been successfully used to set goals, motivate behaviors, represent achievements and communicate success in many contexts" and proposes that when learning happens across various contexts and experiences, "badges can have a significant impact, and can be used to motivate learning, signify community and signal achievement."

[13] To launch the Open Badges project, Mozilla and MacArthur engaged with over 300 nonprofit organizations, government agencies and others about informal learning, breaking down education monopolies and fuelling individual motivation.

[15] By 2013, over 1,450 organizations were issuing Open Badges and Mozilla's partnership with Chicago had grown into the Cities of Learning Initiative, an opportunity to apply CSOL's success across the country.

Founding members include Mozilla, the MacArthur Foundation, DigitalME, Sprout Fund, National Writing Project, Blackboard and others.

In 2015, the Badge Alliance spun out of Mozilla and became a part of MacArthur Foundation spin off, Collective Shift - a nonprofit devoted to redesigning social systems for a connected world.

Commonly, badges are thought of as rewards but have been found to be most effective when they also contribute to goal setting, reputation, status affirmation, instruction and group identification.

[26] When TripAdvisor started showing badges on user pages, they explicitly indicated that this was to recognize the most frequent contributors.

[28] In 2016, IBM used Open Badges to launch a world-wide training initiative and saw dramatic increases in employee participation.

[29] Unlike most online media, open badge programs are collaborative ones that promote active, engaged involvement.

While there are several modes of online collective action, all of the systems are largely run by a very small number of people; "for example, just two percent of Wikipedia users account for 75% of participation".

[35][36] Digital badges might be particularly useful as part of a formative assessment process, providing constant feedback and tracking of what has been learned and what the next step might be.

Massive online open courses (MOOCs) and e-assessments,[37][full citation needed] can be used to deliver content at scale, while providing structured points for formative assessment, connections to learning communities, and new possibilities for strengthening individual agency in the learning process.

[38][full citation needed] However, strategies like peer review, interactive games or simulations, and self-administered tests might help in fragmenting assessment processes, while still providing essential feedback to the learner along the way.

[41] With two-thirds of U.S. college or university students falling into the non-traditional category (meaning they aren't first-time, first-year students arriving on campus straight from high school), non-degree certificate programs will play an increasing role in providing post-secondary education opportunities.

Some claim that the long history of physical badges in military and quasi-military settings might encourage similar hierarchical relationships when employed online.

[52] The "gamification" of education is also something that skeptics fear because they feel that students would only be concerned with earning the most badges rather than focusing on the material presented.